Section III: Forecast and Future Visions

As the proverb says, ‘Prevention is better than the cure’. Indeed, disease prevention has been shown to be conducive to the alleviation of the burden of disease and related risk factors. In order to achieve SDG 3, it is thus of utmost importance to monitor health status and promote healthy behaviours. In this section, suggestions for the way forward are presented.

Mobile wearable technology has unique implications for the comprehension and implementation of SDG 3. Cheung and Wu, in the chapter ‘The Development of Wearable Mobile Health Devices in Promoting Healthy Lifestyles’, claim that applications of the mobile wearable technology industry are limitless, particularly in relation to medicine and healthcare settings. The adoption of electronic health systems, including record keeping, in the healthcare industry worldwide has permitted enhanced data standardisation and interoperability. As public awareness of the importance of a healthy lifestyle increases, consumer demand continues to be the main driver for mobile wearables; this is encouraging more companies to pursue the development of wearable healthcare devices such as individual wearables such as smart-watches. Cheung and Wu suggest that there are three pillars of health data analytics that use information technology which permit the analysis of significant personal health data. The three pillars include: (1) big data; (2) artificial intelligence and (3) cloud computing. Using these three, health service organisations are empowered by health data analytics that can greatly enhance the efficiency of patient outcomes through improved automation of data and the use of predictive algorithms. Research shows how the ubiquitous recording of individuals through mobile and wearable devices generates large health-related datasets. Artificial intelligence provides the tools to analyse the big data such that useful patterns may be discerned through information extraction and knowledge discovery from the datasets. Clearly, without artificial intelligence one cannot access the true potential of big data. Lastly, cloud computing provides the computing resources so that organisations of varying sizes can make use of the data in affordable and timely ways. Without cloud computing and its service model architectures, only large enterprises have the privilege of utilising the technologies in big data and artificial intelligence. Cheung and Wu conclude that health data analytics are difficult to perform without the three pillars of information technology – big data, artificial intelligence and cloud computing being in place.